The Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis is extraordinarily talented - he's whip smart, a terrific story-teller, and has a great sense of humor.  His books are seemingly quite diverse - Liar's Poker and The Big Short are about Wall Street, Moneyball describes how data analysis revolutionized baseball, Blind Side explains why offensive left tackles were the second-highest paid position on a football team, The Undoing Project profiles two psychologists who overturned widely accepted theories about how the mind works - but a common thread is that these books generally deal with economic issues and how they impact society.  They're wonderful reads because Lewis has a gift for explaining difficult topics clearly, mainly by profiling key individuals through arresting or amusing anecdotes.

The book is inspiring in its portrayal of several very knowledgeable and intelligent governmental officials (in the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Agriculture, and the NOAA), who chose government out of a desire to help their country.  This idealistic commitment is contrasted with several accounts of the appallingly ignorant and selfish perspective of many Trump appointees during formation of the new Trump government.  Immediately after being elected, the President Elect is required by law to form a transition team.

The first time Donald Trump paid any attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper.  The story revealed that Trump's very own transition team, led by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, had raised several million dollars to pay the staff.  The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign......and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find the governor of New Jersey seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, actually yelling You're stealing my money! You're stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this?? Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed, Why are you letting him steal my fucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law........  To which Trump replied, Fuck the law. I don't give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn't have both his money and a transition.  

Shut it down, said Trump.  Shut down the transition.  

Bannon asked Trump: "What do you think MorningJoe will say if you shut down your transition?" Bannon suggested MorningJoe would say it was because Trump didn't think he had any chance of being elected.  Trump stopped hollering.  For the first time, he seemed actually to have listened. "That makes sense," he said.

The cover and back of the book offer a hint as to its contents: careless removal of jenga pieces will cause the structure to collapse; in this book, the "structure" is the US government.   The title?  Well, a few months after the transition, when senior administrators in different departments were dismissed and/or ignored, Lewis interviewed many of them to find out what they would have told the incoming administrators about the issues currently facing the department. 

As an example, he spoke at some length with John MacWilliams, a super bright guy who had had an interesting and varied career: graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School, worked for a law firm, then as an investment advisor for the energy sector at Goldman Sachs, wrote a novel, started and sold a private investment firm - and, at the request of MIT nuclear physicist Ernie Moniz, who had just been named Secretary of Energy, joined the DOE as their first-ever chief risk officer.  (McWilliams confessed that when he first joined DOE, he knew next to nothing about what it did - but dove in and eventually learned that about half its budget went to maintaining the nuclear arsenal and protecting America from nuclear threats.  Another quarter was devoted to cleaning up  contamination associated with production of nuclear weapons, and the remaining budget supported access and use of energy).

Lewis asked him how he would have briefed a new DOE appointee on the 5 greatest risks facing the DOE.  MacWilliams said Risk 1 was a nuclear weapons accident (A "Broken Arrow" incident).  He identified Risk 2 as North Korea ("The risk of mistakes being made and lots of people being killed is increasing dramatically.  It wouldn't necessarily be a nuclear weapon they might deliver. It could be sarin gas").  He suggested that Iran is "in the top 5" - at the time of writing, the deal with Iran had been concluded and "the serious risk in Iran wasn't that the Iranians would secretly acquire a weapon. It was that the president of the United States would not understand the nuclear scientists' reasoning about the unlikelihood of the Iranians' obtaining a weapon, and that he would have the United States back away foolishly from the deal." MacWilliams gave some past examples of Risk 4, which could be distilled down to the difficulty of imagining unexpected risks.  The Fifth Risk?  "Project Management," was all he said.